ELECTION2016

What date will the General Election be?

Following a lot of upheaval in November of this year, there followed quite a lot of speculation about what date we will see a possible General Election.

Earlier this year, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny stated the election will be early in Spring. With government popularity, particularly Fine Gael popularity at a high, many are now pretty convinced that Enda Kenny's party will be back in government this year.

Today on Lunchtime, Shane Coleman and Mick Clifford discussed some of the issues surrounding the Election and when they think it will take place.

Shane stated: "I think if Enda Kenny got his way it would be at the end of January. I think he wants it sooner rather than later. The fly in the ointment is the Banking Inquiry. I don't see a scenario where if the Banking Inquiry is going to report by the 24th of January that Enda Kenny will call an election before that. If he does that, he scuppers the Banking Inquiry.

"He set it up, it was his mission to get to the bottom of what happened, it has cost x number of million euro... If he calls an Election scuppering the Banking Inquiry, he will spend the first week of the campaign defending that decision and I don't think that is something that he will do.

"If, on the other hand, there is some kind of legal challenge or judicial review of the Banking Inquiry, the Banking Inquiry effectively falls anyway because the length of time that will take, even if you postpone the Election until April, there wouldn't be enough time. In that scenario, I could see Enda Kenny going to the Election, the Dáil not coming back, him going the Áras some time in early January and having an election, either the end of January or the first week in February."

You can listen to Shane and Mick discussing the Election date here:

They went on to discuss what that Government may look like and the fact that there probably won't be any alternative to the main party in Government following the Election: